Karakuri Babble is a daily column by the editors of i360.com, usually on topics tangentially related to anime and cosplay.

In the past we have endorsed many things; in the future we shall support many others.

A quote from Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead:

A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until--"My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming. I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience. . . . "Look, look!" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer."

Got asked today why I preferred fiction to non-fiction. I didn't reply with that quote, but I really should have.

Instead I gave several reasons. The word "narrative" might have come up a few times. I still think they were pretty good reasons, although I didn't deliver them very convincingly. But the real answer is that I continue to believe the purpose of fiction is to produce something in our minds that seems more tractable, more real than reality itself.

words from chris, 2009-03-18 01:32:51, los angeles